When I was, I think it was 16 years old, I got my first real job, other than a paper
route or babysitting, working at a print shop, not that one, not that long ago, called Abso
Blueprints in Etobicoke, just west of Toronto, and my neighbor was the manager of the store,
so he offered us a summer job, it turned into a year-round job, and I was so keen to have
this first experience of a real job, and I remember when I got there, we'd be making
blueprints through these big machines and just basically trying to improve production
and jobs, would come in the front door and we'd have to get them done fast and get them
out, and as a 16-year-old keener, I was, I had to get faster results than anyone else,
I was so desirous of being a good employee and doing a good job that every time I went
there, my printing rate went up, my production rate, my trimming rate, whatever needed to
be done, I was doing faster and faster and faster and faster than all the other people
who'd worked there for years, so I was pretty proud of myself for that, they hated me, but
all I wanted to do was do well, and looking back now, right, so that I knew I was somebody,
right, and that I had something to contribute and I mattered.
So one day, another guy who works with me, joined after I did, 10 years older than I
was, Alfie, after about three months of he and I working side by side, I hear that Alfie
gets a raise from ABSO, $1.50 an hour, and I think, oh, that's great, I can hardly wait
to get called into the office for my raise, they're probably getting Alfie done first
and then bring me in, and then for the next several days, crickets, nothing, no raise
coming for John, so finally I go into the office of my boss, Gord Brown, and say, what's
up, here's Alfie, who's an okay employee, but he's not producing like I'm producing,
and here you give him a raise of $1.50 an hour, and I've been here longer than him and
do much more than he does, what is up, and so he, in retrospect, instead of firing me
right on the spot, says John, Alfie lives on his own, he pays rent, he lives with his
mom and he has to support her, and he needs a higher salary so that he can have a life.
You're living at home, you're in school, and if we can help Alfie out, we're gonna help
Alfie out. Now get out of my office. And so I left his office totally shaken by the fact
that I was the kind of person that deserved that kind of rebuke, that I was so self-absorbed
in what I was doing in my good work in life that I couldn't see a grace like that for
what it was. And I wonder if the hard-working characters and Jesus' parable of the laborers
ever felt the same way. God's kingdom, Jesus said, is like an estate manager who went out
early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. They agreed on a wage of $1 a day
and went to work. Later, about nine o'clock, the manager saw some other men hanging around
the town square, unemployed, and he told them to go and work in his vineyard, and he would
pay them a fair wage. They went. He did the same thing at noon and again at three o'clock,
at five o'clock, he went back and still found others standing around, and he said, why are
you standing around all day doing nothing? And they said, because no one hired us, and
he told them to go work in his vineyard. When the day's work was over, the owner of the
vineyard instructed his foreman, call the workers in and pay them their wages, start
with the last hired, and go on to the first. Those hired at five o'clock came up and were
each given a dollar. When those who were hired first saw that, they assumed they would be
getting far more, but they got the same, each of them, $1. Taking the dollar, they grossed
angrily to the manager. These last workers put in only one easy hour, and you just made
them equal to us, who slaved all day under a scorching sun, and he replied to the one
speaking for the rest, friend, I haven't been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar,
didn't we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as
you. Can't I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I'm generous?
And then Jesus adds this parenthetical comment. Here it is again, the great reversal. Many
of the first ending up last, and the last first. So have you ever felt that kind of resentment
when someone in your class, it's usually someone who's a peer or close to you, a family member,
a friend, someone in your class gets an unfair break, or the newbie at work gets promoted
past you? Or once again, that friend of yours to whom life always seems to come so easy
and so beautifully, it happens again, or someone cuts in line, just not the way the world is
supposed to be, right? Or is it? I mean, according to this parable in Jesus, things in the kingdom
of God, His world are sometimes, maybe often that way. Maybe more often than not, certainly
more often than we're comfortable with. When it comes to the kingdom of God, things are
backwards and upside down, inside out. And when Jesus tells the parable like this, to
them back then, to us, you, right now, it's meant to turn your, this foundational, we
don't even question it, concept of merit-based reward on its head. And Jesus in telling it
exposes your and my merit-based, works-based blind spots. Apparently equal pay for equal
work is not the way things work with God. Thank God. And God seems to be the kind of
God who pays slackers for a full day's work. And were you to complain to God about the
unfairness of this? I'm sure He would say the same thing to you that He said to them,
Heather, I haven't been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn't we? So take
it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last, the same as you. Can't I do what
I want with my own money? With my own love, with my own gifts, with my own salvation?
Are you going to get stingy because I'm so generous? And then something inside of me
goes, yes, I am. Because it is not fair, God. This is an Achilles heel in me. It comes
up still at 55 all the time. It's more polite than, it's not fair, but it's there. I've
done everything you've asked of me. I've behaved as best I could, did the work you wanted,
took the call, did what you asked me to do, God. And this is how I'm rewarded. Are you
telling us, God, that behavior doesn't matter to you? I mean, surely not, because it does,
it says in the Bible, you said it yourself, be holy as I am holy. And then I imagine Jesus
responding to me with a kind of gentleness like my boss had. Yeah, what you do does matter.
Of course it matters. All the workers in that story worked, but the way you calculate the
value of my work is the problem of your work. I want you to do your best, but the moment
you think your best is good enough or your best is in some way meriting what I'm going
to give you, you're in trouble. The risk of good behavior and effort and performance is
that you might be tempted to think you've earned your reward, earned your salvation,
have to keep earning it to keep it your pay. And the moment you're there, you are on the
edge of a precipice, risking a very big fall. So Jesus tells a parable like this and many
others to upend us and teach us that the kingdom doesn't work that way and God's love doesn't
work that way. God's kingdom has lots of room for low end performers, the least, the last,
the lost and the losers in this world. So you hear a parable like that and it kind of
begs the question, it does in me, then is this what Christian faith is to me? Is this
the kind of understanding of salvation and God and grace and works that I live with?
Or is Christian faith just a good moral and upright way to do a life or just a good ethical
community that does some service overseas and has a cool vision? Or maybe it's just
a safe place from this depraved and secular world? Or is it a place that by the grace
of God your sorry but ended up because he was willing to love you in spite of the fact
that you were so screwed up and had it all wrong and upside down and so needed help and
were so desperate and had no idea and yet he reached out and included you?
Jesus told this parable in part to a bunch of hyper-religious Pharisees, high rollers
who were clearly high on themselves, who figured that keeping the law was a huge part of earning
and keeping your salvation, your reward with God. And so for them to hear these words,
it would have been a total affront. But to the other people in the crowd, maybe hanging
around the outside edges or just within earshot who didn't feel they maybe even deserved to
be there, when they heard this, it was hope. It was a place for me. They would have laughed
out loud and maybe wondered, who is this guy? Because he just said that and he's not laughing
and he believes it and I believe him. And then maybe a tear comes to your eye and you
go, could that be true? Could a person like me be loved by God in that kind of way, a
full day's pay? And the question again becomes, who are you in the crowd? Or some in between
those two extremes person? Those who think they're first or those who know they're last?
And then I hear the whisper in me, John, every time you went that someone receiving an unmerited
gift or a grace or getting a freebie or enjoying life, when you work so hard at your job, you
are answering that question. And this is in me. And so far I cannot extricate it from
my life. This is who we innately are, works based, self righteous. We will earn our way
to God or live our lives as though that's true people. We forget, I forget, which always
reminds me of how the apostle Paul, he must have written these next words because he
had to help remind himself not to forget. Saint Paul didn't forget when he writes this.
We couldn't carry this being saved by God thing off by our own efforts and we know it.
Even though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree,
he writes, a legitimate birth circumcised on the eighth day in Israelite from the elite
tribe of Benjamin, a strict and devout adherent to God's law, a fiery defender of the purity
of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church, a meticulous observer of everything
set down in God's law book. The very credentials these people are waving around as something
special, I'm tearing up and throwing out with a trash, along with everything else I used
to take credit for and why? Because of Christ. Yes, all things I once thought were so important
are gone from my life. Compared with the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my master,
first hand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant, dog dung. Paul
actually used the S word there. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace
Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty inferior brand of righteousness
that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from
trusting Christ, God's righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know
Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and
go all the way with him to death itself if there was any way to get in on the resurrection
from the dead. He didn't want some petty inferior brand of righteousness, self-supply, that
comes from keeping a list of rules when he could get the robust kind of righteousness
that comes from trusting Christ, God's righteousness. And how are those two different? Well, Christ's
righteousness, God's, instead of being meager and impotent and short-lived, is overflowing,
life-changing and eternal in its nature. Instead of being a mortal you thing that you produce,
it's a heavenly gifted thing that God produces so it should feel like a miracle that that
would be at work in your my life. And instead, connected to the parable of being something
you've earned or deserved, it is freely given and received through humility and tears. It's
everything given to you for nothing. And that's what Christ's message is, the good news, I'll
give you everything for free, I'll give you me, and you'll know me personally, and you'll
know God, and you'll suffer with me, and you'll know the power of my salvation and resurrection,
and you'll have a life. It's like a bunch of last hired one-hour working workers getting
a full day's pay. It's like blind and deaf people who could never have possibly saved
themselves or healed themselves miraculously seeing and hearing again. It's like a smart
mouth, self-filled, self-righteous, egocentric teenager slash 55-year-old being called to
be a minister in the church and speak for God. It's like him or you. Are you guys on
that table, really? Being included, being paid a full day's pay and being given life,
eternal life. Here it is again, Jesus said, the great reversal, many of the first ending
up last and the last first. One of my favorite theologians, evidently one of pastor riches
too, and you don't preach a parable without quoting Robert Ferrara-Capan, commenting on
this parable, makes some very hard hitting observations. He says that in this parable,
it falls not on the unacceptable, but only on those who will not accept acceptance. Bookkeeping
is the only punishable offense in the kingdom of heaven, he writes. And then the hardest
hitting, hell is reserved for those idiots who insist on keeping non-existent records
in their heads. How can I be so stingy with God when, with my love, with my grace, when
God has been so generous to me? And as I said at the beginning of the service, I think we
need to grasp, I need to grasp this again, and we've got a cool vision and a neat calling
and a charism that God's given our church, and I am more excited about that than ever.
But if it's not born out of grace, of this incredulity at the love of God, an ever-present
sense of being lavished upon and held and accepted by God, if we're not a community
within which that is flowing, then it's gonna go nowhere. I always think when I need to
be humbled and learn that performance doesn't matter, always think about my downy boy, son
Edward, who, as I thought about him this week, rarely defines himself by his performance,
at least not in a so-I-have-value kind of way. He does good things out of such a freedom
and awareness of self and never does that kind of works-based math. I don't think it
ever crosses his mind that he'd be loved more for being good or loved less if he fell short.
And he rarely fights to be first. He's never said it's not fair or even communicated that
kind of a sentiment in my memory. So when we go swimming at the Clarny Pool, and there's
kids all lining up for the diving board, and he's just, I watch from the hot tub. I watch
from the hot tub. And I'm projecting on him, cut in line. You were there first. Don't let
that little kid, that kid's a little earlier than you. They got out four jumps ago. Don't
let them pass you. And Edward just kind of, and they all, and then finally there's one
kid, often a little girl, half Edward's age, who will look at him and kind of just signal
to him that it's his turn. And he goes, okay, and he gets in and he does his crazy jump.
And I think that's the kingdom of God. That's who I ought to be. The kind of person who
puts others first so much that lives into a grace that evokes something in another,
a kind of grace that creates that kind of a story, that kind of a letting in, that kind
of a life. Surely it's with that kind of heart that people, that Jesus saw all those people
that he told this parable to back then gathered around him. And it's surely with that kind
of heart that God sees you right now. Be holy as I am holy, but the way God is holy is gracious.
So God is perfect and perfect in terms of this ridiculous love for people who don't
deserve it. So there again, the great reversal people, many of you first ending up last,
and I trust and pray many of us last ending up first. Let's pray.
So, Lord, let these Your words dwell in us. Stick to us. Help us to be
reminded of them by your spirit, this parable you spoke, you speak, this grace you are and
you are. Help us to hear it as directly and intimately and personally as we ought, as
we can, as you invite us to hear it, like someone in the crowd who all of a sudden your
eyes are moving around and eye contact happens and we know it and you know it. And we know
this is meant for us and that kind of love and that kind of grace and that kind of life
is meant for us. And we know it feeling so seen and loved and accepted despite messing
up all the time. May that moment be everyone's moment in this place, in your world, because
we're meant for life. We're meant to be clothed anew with your righteousness and seeing as
perfect because of your perfection. Help that to happen for each of us and for all
of us here so that your name might be honored, so that your grace would be paid forward and
go forth so that we wouldn't be such freaks about performance and fairness and the worst
sense of the word and all the things that inordinately take up our energies. But that
instead we would be known as people who love in ridiculous ways and just stand back and
let others go first and celebrate with those who luck out and who get a beauty and a grace
in their lives. May that be more and more what identifies and is who we are as a community.
Who I am and who each of us is in this community. This we pray, Lord, in your name and in the
name of our Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
